


than all the portraits in the world.

by redhoods



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Sharing Clothes, briefly the bad kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22943320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redhoods/pseuds/redhoods
Summary: Ragh’s expression goes confused for a second, “Oh!” He scoffs quietly at himself and Gorgug squeezes his thigh before he realizes he’s doing it, drawing Ragh’s pitch eyes back to his face, “You don’t ever wear the jacket?”“The jacket?” He asks slowly.Ragh nods, expression solemn and serious, “Everyone else on the team at least wears theirs sometimes, yanno? And I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear yours like... ever?”
Relationships: Ragh Barkrock/Gorgug Thistlespring
Comments: 24
Kudos: 309





	than all the portraits in the world.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [losebetter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/losebetter/gifts).



> listen, i'm only on like... ep 5 or 6 of season 2. if something bad happens or whatever, i don't wanna hear it!!!!! i want to protect them, i want to see them grow up healthy, i want to tell my friends and neighbors about them. etc, etc.
> 
> there's no spoilers for anything in this, just some nebulous time where the lads are together.
> 
> title from having a coke with you by frank o'hara.
> 
> _I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world_

They’re playing crystal games and Gorgug has _finally, miraculously_ beat Ragh, despite his own controller being slightly fractured from how tight he’s been gripping the thing in his frustration. It’s really unfair how good Ragh is at these things, he shouldn’t be, it’s illogical, the controller almost disappears into his hands, how he manages to so deftly kick his butt no matter the game is ridiculous.

So he turns to finally return the favor of crowing about his victory and realizes that Ragh hadn’t even been looking at the screen, controller lax in one palm.

Victory sails deflated, Gorgug follows his gaze across the small space of his room to his open closet, “Ragh?” He jostles their pressed together shoulders, bumps their knees together as well. It’s... not a big deal, it’s really not. His room is so small and Ragh is even bigger than he is, of course they have to squish together, both of them on the floor to play the game.

Either of them sitting on the bed while playing would just be inviting the frame to break again really.

“Ragh?” He tries again.

Ragh blinks and his gaze swings back, “Aw, man! You beat me!”

Eyebrows pulling together, he shrugs, one hand curling around the controller, the other hovering above Ragh’s thigh, not sure if he wants to touch, not quite sure what he’s missed, “It was pretty easy, dude,” he says slowly, “considering you were staring into my closet.”

Ragh’s ears flatten back, his shoulders pulling tense, “Was not,” his lower lip juts out, managing a pout even with the shape of his tusks.

(The urge to kiss him wells up and Gorgug smushes it. Communication is important.)

“Were too,” he says. Which... is not what he’d meant to say, but some habits he can’t break, especially with the amount of time he spends with Fig.

“Was not!” Ragh interjects immediately, cheeks flooding with color, face going ruddy and Gorgug puts his hand down then, palm against Ragh’s thigh, and Ragh sags down, tension sinking, “Was too,” he says mulish.

Gorgug puts his crystal down, tugs Ragh’s out of his hand as well, so neither of them end up crushed, “Whatcha thinkin’ about?”

It takes a few minutes of Ragh looking down at his own lap, Gorgug’s hand on his thigh just a steady weight, before he reaches out with his own hand, starts picking at a fraying seam on Gorgug’s hoodie with his claws, “You like being on the team, yeah?”

“Uh?” He scratches at his head, pushing his hair back from his face, though it only flops right back down, part of the white streak dipping briefly into his line of sight.

“I mean, you’re real good at it, yanno?” Ragh starts, gearing up for some sort of ramble that might make sense, might not, but Gorgug’s found it’s usually easier to let him spill it all out then make sense of it afterwards. 

Also it’s a little endearing when he gets really ranting.

A lot.

A lot endearing.

“You are!” He insists, as though Gorgug has protested in some way, “You’re real good at bloodrush and the team really needs you, and I really like playing with you,” he bursts out, “and watching you tackle the shit outta people! That’s really fucking cool,” he stops there though.

Gorgug blinks at his earnest expression, “I... okay?” He gently knocks Ragh’s fingers from his sleeve before he really puts a hole in the fabric, ends up with their fingers locked, his own arm awkwardly across his body to do so, “Why do you think I don’t like it?”

Ragh’s expression goes confused for a second, “Oh!” He scoffs quietly at himself and Gorgug squeezes his thigh before he realizes he’s doing it, drawing Ragh’s pitch eyes back to his face, “You don’t ever wear the jacket?”

“The jacket?” He asks slowly.

Ragh nods, expression solemn and serious, “Everyone else on the team at least wears theirs sometimes, yanno? And I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear yours like... ever?”

His own gaze drifts to the closet where his letterman is hanging .

“Do you not like the jacket?” Ragh asks, his claws scraping over the skin on the back of Gorgug’s hand, a little ticklish, a little bit more distracting, and probably completely unaware he’s even doing it, “Does it not fit?”

Gorgug shakes his head, pulling his attention back to Ragh, “No, it fits,” he says carefully, trying to piece together his own feelings. “I’d never even thought about it,” he adds, looking down at their tangled fingers, “I guess I’m just used to my hoodie? It’s easier to blend in plus the jacket is... tight.”

Inevitably, he finds himself looking at the broad stretch of Ragh’s shoulders, even though his jacket is currently tossed over the end of Gorgug’s bed, “It works for you,” he ignores the way Ragh jostles his shoulder, the curve of a smirk at the corners of his mouth, “but it makes me uncomfortable, I guess?”

Ragh’s expression goes serious and earnest again, “What about a bigger jacket?” 

“I think it’s too late in the year to get another jacket, right?”

Then Ragh is moving suddenly, shoving up to standing, swearing colorfully when he knocks his head off the roof and several things in the room rattle, something upstairs falls off a shelf, “Sorry, Mrs. Thistlespring!” Ragh calls up through the ceiling, ducking low, expression sheepish.

“No harm done, bud!” His mom calls back.

Ragh shoots him an embarrassed grin before he moves again, a careful few shuffles until he’s scooping up his jacket and the irrational fear that he’s leaving strikes Gorgug in the chest just before a bundle of leather smacks him in the face.

It smells like grass and sweat and the scent he’s come to associate with Ragh that he realizes might just be the material of the letterman. “What?” He pulls the jacket off of his head, absently clutching it to his chest with one hand, using the other to comb fingers through his hair again. Still a futile effort really.

“You could wear my jacket!” Ragh says, earnest but... nervous, maybe?

His ears are pinning back against his head again, a too obvious tell now that Gorgug knows him well enough.

“But what would you wear?” Gorgug asks, like Ragh actually needs the jacket. Especially in the middle of summer.

Ragh flounders, gaze slinging around like he’s going to find something in Gorgug’s room of all places, before it lands on Gorgug himself, and dips down, “I could wear your hoodie,” he declares suddenly, proudly, chest puffing out.

He very nearly straightens out as well, stops just shy of hitting his head off the ceiling, ducking back down low.

It clearly means a lot to Ragh, down to his earnest expression, almost shy in a way that Gorgug doesn’t know how to handle from Ragh. So Gorgug clears his throat, nods slowly too many times, “Okay, yeah? Sure?” He clears his throat again, “Sure, we could do that.”

The sheer relief and happiness on Ragh’s face is absolutely worth how awkward it’s going to be, “Well come on, man, lets see how it fits!” He bursts and sits himself on the edge of Gorgug’s bed which creaks ominously, both of them freezing. It creaks more but doesn’t give.

“The metal reinforcements might be working,” he says very quietly to Ragh, like somehow speaking too loud might cause it to give out.

Ragh barely seems to be breathing for a solid minute while Gorgug pushes himself up onto his knees. He puts his headphones down next to his crystal and drags his hoodie off over his head, the soft, worn fabric pooling by his knees.

He rubs the material of the letterman jacket between his fingers for a second, careful not to look at Ragh as he slides his arm into one sleeve, wrestles himself into the jacket. It hangs a little on his frame, Ragh is so much broader in every aspect, and the sleeves are even a little long, hanging around his knuckles to the point that he can curl his fingers around the ends like he does in his hoodie.

When he lifts his gaze, words on his tongue, “How does it lo—” but Ragh is staring at him slack jawed.

Cheeks hot, he goes to shrug it off, “It looks dumb, doesn’t it?”

“No!” Ragh bursts suddenly, actually launches at him, tackles him to the floor. Stuff rattles but Gorgug doesn’t hear anything fall anywhere, blood pounding in his ears as Ragh brackets him against the floor, leaning over him, “No,” he says again, quieter, “it doesn’t look dumb.”

“Okay,” he replies, not sure if Ragh actually hears him, shifting restless under the sweep of Ragh’s gaze.

Then Ragh slumps against him, full weight crushing him into the floors, knocking the breath out of his chest though he can’t say if it’s from the weight of him or the nudge of Ragh’s face against his throat. He tentatively wraps his arms around Ragh’s back, palms flat on either of side of his spine, can feel the shift of muscles through the material of his t-shirt as he breathes.

“Is this okay?” Ragh asks suddenly, voice a gust of hot air against his skin, the gentle scrape of tusks.

Heart rate stuttering, he curls his fingers against Ragh’s back, “Uh huh.”

The tip of Ragh’s nose draws along the line of his throat, a gentle kiss to the hinge of his jaw. It’s not the first time that he’s seen Ragh like this, careful and gentle, inhaling his scent by the lungful, but it’s the first time that Ragh has been so intentional about it, not tried to mask it.

“Okay?” He asks, sliding his hand up Ragh’s back.

A low rumble rolls through Ragh’s chest, the barest beginnings of what might be a purr before teeth scrape over his neck, tusks blunt pressure over his skin, “So okay, so good,” Ragh mumbles, “you smell like me.”

He exhales, letting his head tip back against the floor, realization sinking in, “You like that?” 

Ragh lifts up a little, only creating enough space between them to bump their foreheads together, “Hell fucking yeah, I do, dude,” and before Gorgug can formulate some sort of response to that, Ragh is kissing him, their tusks knocking together before he tilts his head.

It’s... the thing is that they’ve kissed.

Like a lot.

But they’ve been taking things slow, wading through new territory for both of them.

This is absolutely not that.

A genuine, rumbling purr starts up in Ragh’s chest and he can feel it in his own where they’re pressed together, the press of the points of Ragh’s claws against his skin when Ragh cups his jaw, angles his head back a fraction more.

Ragh is the one to break the kiss, pulling back slow, and Gorgug only realizes that the low whine comes from his own chest when Ragh slants him a crooked grin, dips back in to drag a kiss against his jaw.

Then one on the side of his neck, a teasing hint of teeth and blunt pressure of tusks that has him sucking in a quiet breath.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Gorgug exhales, fingers twisted in Ragh’s t-shirt, says again more steadily, “yeah, good.”

An actual groan spills out of Ragh, above the sounds of the purr still rolling through his chest, “Good,” his breath a hot exhale against Gorgug’s skin that has him squirming against the wood floor. Until Ragh bites down, starts worrying at his skin with his teeth and tusks, and he finds himself digging his fingers into Ragh’s back, hoping his claws are short enough not to puncture the fabric of his shirt.

Ragh spends what feels like a small eternity focused on that one spot, the area throbbing and tender from the attention, and Gorgug feels like he does in the moments before rage overtakes him but in a good way.

Blood thundering in his veins, breath coming too fast.

Then Ragh’s tongue drags over the spot and Gorgug groans, hurriedly biting down on his own lip to stifle the sound but Ragh is lifting up anyways, focusing on him with almost solid black eyes, lips swollen and pulled in a teasing smirk as he drags the points of his claws over the spot.

Gorgug shudders and doesn’t know what to do with how pleased and happy Ragh looks about it, takes his distraction as the chance to flip them, slamming Ragh onto his back and settling himself astride his middle.

It doesn’t make Ragh look any less pleased.

Maybe actually more pleased.

Something slides off his bedside table and thumps to the floor, he pays it no mind.

“Hey,” Ragh says, eyes dipped to his throat, his hands warm when they touch Gorgug’s thighs, tentative almost until they push up under the jacket, resting against his sides between the jacket and his t-shirt.

“Okay?” Gorgug asks, even as he’s leaning forward, waits though hovering over him.

“Really fucking okay,” Ragh answers.

And Gorgug kisses the side of his mouth, having actually been aiming for a kiss but his attention is drawn to the strong line of Ragh’s jaw, the bare line of his throat without the collar of the letterman in the way. The impulse strikes him then, the quiet rumble of Ragh’s chest, the sound in his own rising up to match it, and he dips down, presses his mouth clumsy against the line of Ragh’s throat.

Ragh’s fingers go tight against his sides though and he’s pretty sure that’s a sign he’s doing something right, so he does it again and again and again, scraping his tusks over Ragh’s skin mostly unintentional.

Just when he’s finally gotten the nerve to bite down, careful pressure that has Ragh exhaling loudly below him, both of their crystal bing with notifications.

He groans loudly, slumping down against Ragh’s chest, face against his neck, “Come onnnn,” he whines there.

Ragh actually laughs, shoulders quaking as he shifts, presumably to grab a crystal, “Oh hell yeah!” He crows after a few seconds of silence. His palm is flat between Gorgug’s shoulders, still under the jacket, thumb sweeping back and forth, another one of those absent things that Gorgug is certain he doesn’t realize he does, “Ice cream, man, we gotta go!”

Gorgug groans again.

“Come on, we got all the time,” Ragh says against the top of his head, crystal clattering to the floor.

Sighing, he lifts his head, dips it back almost immediately, because the temptation is still heavily there and there’s not a rush to go get ice cream. Basrar’s isn’t going anywhere. He presses a kiss to Ragh’s neck, feels his sharp intake as much as he hears it, rubs his tusks over the area.

Ragh’s hand slides into his hair on the back of his head, just cupping the back of his skull, “Yeah, okay, ice cream will be there in five, right?”

He bites at the spot, worries it with his teeth and tusks like Ragh had done to him, and Ragh goes quiet, lax against the floor. The thud of Ragh’s heart is steady and strong under his mouth and he can hear Ragh’s shaky breathing over the pound of his own heart.

Neither are enough to cover up several successive dings from both of their crystals, a torrent of group chat messages that make him sigh against Ragh’s skin. He presses another kiss to the spot, pulls back and admires the discoloration already happening before sliding sideways off of Ragh and onto the floor on his ass.

Watches the rise and fall of Ragh’s chest, watches him bring a hand up to press fingers against the mark.

Both of their crystals go off with another round of notifications.

“Ice cream!” Ragh declares suddenly as he sits up, then more carefully pushes himself to stand, shoulders and head ducked away from the ceiling.

Gorgug follows him a little more sedately, scooping up both of their crystals and handing Ragh’s off to him as they turn to slide out of his door. Though he ends up bumping into Ragh when he suddenly stops, “Ragh?”

“Wait, I forgot something,” Ragh says, trying to push passed him back into the room, which only ends with them wedged together chest to chest in the hallway. Ragh grins sheepishly at him, ducks in for a quick kiss before brute forcing his way through back into the room, “I’ll be down in a second!”

Nodding at absolutely nothing, Gorgug shuffles his way out of the tree, nearly stumbling out onto the front lawn. His parents are working on something in their workshop space, music cranked up loud, a flurry of activity to the point that they don’t even notice him.

Thankfully they also don’t notice the way he finds himself staring, mouth open, when Ragh ducks out of the house wearing his discarded hoodie.

Sure, it hangs a little loose on his own frame, but on Ragh, it’s—

He might have to worry about the integrity of the seams if he can ever scrape his jaw off the ground.

It’s just that...

Just that.

“Holy shit,” he says without meaning to.

Ragh comes closer to him, grinning all the while and bumps their shoulders, “I won’t kiss you if you got a mouthful of flies,” he says low as he passes by.

“Yes, you would,” Gorgug retorts before he’s really thought about it, but Ragh laughs, loud and boisterous in response. Rubbing his hand over his mouth, he turns to follow after Ragh, eyes on the stretch of the hoodie over his shoulders.

The only good thing about it, is that as they pile into the van, he can’t spend the whole ride staring at Ragh, he’s got to focus on the road.

\-----

He doesn’t think about it until they pull up to Basrar’s and he sees all their friends outside the place, sitting around with milkshakes and ice cream cones. They’re going to get so much shit for this. Ragh is already out of the van, barrelling towards the group and Fabian mostly, tackling him in greeting.

Taking a deep breath, he slides out of the van and follows sedately, is almost immediately joined by Fig who darts over and slams against his side with what she might thinks is force but doesn’t even falter his steps, “Awwww,” she coos, “you’re wearing his jacket!”

“Dude, that’s gay,” Kristen calls, from where she’s seated between Tracker’s legs.

“Hell yeah it is!” Ragh replies, already leaning over to high five her.

Gorgug huffs quietly as he shuffles closer, Fig still clinging to his side like a barnacle, “What about it?” He asks her.

She leans close, almost hits him with her horns, “Dude, look at that fucking hickey!” She crows loudly then darts away as he lunges at her, neatly tucking herself by Adaine and Riz, cackling wildly as she goes. There are several exclamations from the others that follow in the wake.

(“That’s huge,” Fabian says, baffled.

“I know, right?” Ragh replies, proud.)

Ragh is looking over him, proud and happy, clearly unbothered by any of this so he goes to him, fits himself under the arm that Ragh offers to tuck against his side, sticks his tongue out at Fig as he does so.

She gives him a thumbs up and a wink.

“Want a shake?” Ragh asks, drawing his attention, squeezing his shoulders.

“Uh, totally.”

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on [twitter](https://twitter.com/vowofenmity).


End file.
